Adelaide Dos and Don'ts

A lovely beach a special tram ride through the suburbs of Adelaide. Great to stay at or for a day out for lunch and some shopping.

Whenever you visit an Australian city it's always worth checking out the local Botanic Gardens - all the cities seem to have them, they usually cover hundreds of acres of land, and the pride that seems to be taken in maintaining an area of beauty away from the city centre probably deserves an award. Adelaide's Botanic Gardens cover 120 acres, are almost next door to Adelaide Zoo, and contain a large lake by which you can sit and soak up the atmosphere even if you're not in the mood to wander. Every Australian city seems to create it's Botanic Gardens with a different purpose in mind, and the ones in Adelaide appear to be very much about relaxation - whereas the gardens in Brisbane, for example, were covered in woodland and animal habitats, Adelaide seems to be more about plants and flowers and wide open grassy spaces covered in horticultural displays. Rather than feeling as though you are actually walking through a woodland and experiencing a real return to nature, you move between conservatories showcasing different plant and flower species or wander through small gardens of carefully arranged flowers. I prefer the less organised and more natural feel of Brisbane where you can wander on a boardwalk along the reed beds by the river, watching things darting about in the water while surrounded by dense woodland. The main attraction of Adelaide's Botanic Gardens is the International Rose Garden - an area surrounding the Bicentennial Conservatory and showcasing nearly five thousand different types of rose. Pathways meander through the Rose Garden, which is divided into sections according to type, purpose and colour - one moment you can find yourself surrounded by sweet smelling red roses, the next you're looking at The Children's Rose or the Sir Cliff Richard Rose, or something equally bizarre. It seems that they have a Rose for every occasion here, and in the adjacent National Rose Trial Garden, the idea is to create a place where new varieties can be tested to see if they can stand the climate of Australia. I don't care how tough you think you are, you really do get swept away by the colour and the smell - at some point, the benches scattered around the garden draw you to them and you have to sit down, open a bottle of water and just surround yourself with colour and smell for half an hour before moving on.

You can read my full travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

Open air shopping Malls in Australia all seem to be the same and most towns and cities have several. A pedestrianised street runs along a few blocks in the middle of the town and is lined with shops, cafes and restaurants. As there are no cars allowed, there's no need to cross the street or wait for the lights to change so you can spend a carefree afternoon just browsing, drinking or hanging out to watch other people browsing and drinking. More and more malls in Australia are adding wireless internet access, which means that it's also becoming increasingly common to see people sitting about on benches using their laptop and surfing the web, quite often for free. Rundle Mall in Adelaide is a large multi-storey undercover shopping centre, and is by far the largest I've seen for a while - in fact, it is considered by some to be the largest shopping precinct in Australia. Outside on the street, just in case you've got so caught up in the shopping and forgotten just how surreal Australia can be, visitors are welcomed by the sight of two giant stainless steel balls (The Mall's Balls) piled one on top of the other for no adequately explored reason. Inside, the place is huge - the entire ground floor is a food court selling every type of food imaginable, and above it are six floors containing every type of shop under the sun from supermarkets to sex shops. Next door is a smaller food court in which, when I returned here with Tanya in 2002, we spent virtually every day sitting and eating donuts and banana smoothies - something which vendors in Britain seem unable to make. Smoothies in Australia are generally made out of real fruit, and you can watch them stuff bananas into a blender and create the smoothie in front of you - in Britain, on the other hand, there seems to be a tendency to use banana flavour ice cream, which isn't quite the same thing. Adelaide is also famous for its statues. Wherever you go in the city, you'll find everything from statues recalling famous figures from Australian history to the bizarre street art that springs up everywhere. On the pedestrian precinct outside Rundle Mall, litter bins along the street are decorated with full size bronze statues of pigs standing on their hind legs and nosing through the rubbish, other bronze pigs just standing around waiting their turn. These pigs, I have learned since, all have names - Truffles, Horatio, Oliver and Augusta, should you wish to say Hello on your way through. Central Market is a large and diverse area of the city in which you can buy virtually anything you fancy to eat from the tons of speciality stalls selling anything from Cheese to Thai food. You can sit down to eat at a restaurant or scamper from stall to stall bargaining with the cheerful local vendors over vegetables you've never even heard of. The Market is surrounded by cafes, restaurants, fish and chip shops, and with Chinatown just around the corner you could easily spend your day browsing here and go straight on for a meal and a night out afterwards without having to go home in between.

You can read my full travel journals at http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer and http://www.offexploring.com/globalwanderer2

central market on a friday night for a big bowl of steaming spicy noodle soup and a lively time

Mount Lofty is a lookout with a restaurant that over looks the city of Adelaide. It is in the Adelaide Hills, there are some lovely villiage type towns with German influence with markets and restaurants. Great for a day out while visiting Adelaide.